Arrest
On the morning of December 17, 2000, Sampson was snatched at gunpoint by police as he left his home in Riyadh on his way to work. He was taken to al-Ha'ir Prison where regular sessions of physical and psychological torture began immediately. Among other things, Sampson says he was severely and repeatedly beaten, foot whipped, deprived of sleep.
After six initial days of torture largely conducted by three men, Ibrahim al-Dali (officer of the Mabaheth, the Saudi Arabian internal intelligence service), Khaled al-Saleh (officer of the Mabaheth) and a third unnamed man Sampson nicknamed "the Spiv," Sampson confessed and subsequently provided both written and videotaped confessions; he was sentenced to death by al-haad, a form of execution in which the victim is restrained and decapitated. The torture continued in various forms until his release.
A Saudi official has denied that Sampson was tortured.
Read more about this topic: William Sampson (author)
Famous quotes containing the word arrest:
“One does not arrest Voltaire.”
—Charles De Gaulle (1890–1970)
“The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since it will always move. This is the artist’s way of scribbling “Kilroy was here” on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass.”
—William Faulkner (1897–1962)
“An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so.”
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948)